Book Review: Hooked, Lined and Single by Rashmi Kumar

Hooked, Lined & Single by author Rashmi Singh is Alafia Singh’s quest to find Mr Right, right now. Once married, at the age of 21, a marriage that lasted nearly a year, Alafia is now at an age where all she sees around her are married people, and all anyone asks her is when she is “settling down”. Howver, our protagonist is not just finding a groom because of the pressure, but because she wants to get married. Or does she?

The premise of the book is interesting. Our society places so much importance on marriage and “settling down” that we have all seen this happen either to us or to people close to us. The pressures are enormous. Through Alafia’s narrative, we get to hear the stories about her encounters with prospective grooms. The stories are funny, relatable and amusing. It is fascinating to see how people go through the travail of the arranged marriage setup.

But what is more interesting is how the character struggles to know herself better, forgive herself and others for the hurt caused over the years and find out what it is that she exactly wants. Her journey towards finding about her past and how it affects her future is what stood out for me.

While the first half of the book is immensely engaging, and I could hardly put it down, there came a point when I started to lose interest. Wehn it all became a bit repetitive. There are also certain times when the main protagonist is not likeable at all, and you start to question her moves and motives. She says things like “He is not a gay” at one point and that really put me off. Whether that was typo or grammatical error or that Alafia herself is a homophobe, well, who knows. Other than some of these cringe worthy moments, the story is really engaging and one can feel her hurt and pain.

In a nutshell, this is a light one time read that can be finished in a couple of hours. Pick it up if you’re at the airport and have time to kill. If you are someone who’s struggling with the pressures to get married or have in the past, you might want to give it a go.